UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Palestinian People

Prior to deliberations, Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit submitted his opinion to the comittee, stating he was in favor of disqualifying Ben Ari from running for Knesset on the grounds of incitement to racism.

… Zandberg referred to Mendeblit’s opinion, which included quotes from Ben Ari, stating it clearly shows a political agenda that is inherently racist and calls for violence. She quoted Ben Ari, who once said, “Those who only dare to speak against Jews [will] not live,” as an explicit call for violence, and “even incitement to genocide.”

Such graffiti, including its variations, such as “Kahane was right” appear on walls at bus stations for Israelis or on cement blocks positioned alongside West Bank roads. They are hard to miss. The writing on the wall inside the IDF checkpoint is almost hidden… Whoever wrote “Death to the Arabs” in very small print letters did not intend to provoke the passersby.

… But there’s a connection between the natural way a wish for genocide was scribbled on the wall of a military installation, and the automatic responses of soldiers when a Palestinian vehicle struck them. The soldiers shot immediately at the vehicle, deciding on the spot that the driver and the passengers merit the same fate – death. The IDF spokesperson also issued an automatic response: Terror attack. Automatically all the Israeli media report in unison that these were terrorists… The values of the army, the state and Israeli society clearly say here: First thing you do is kill the Arab.

– You term what Israel is doing to the Palestinians “genocide.”“I call it ‘creeping genocide.’ Genocide is not only a matter of taking people to gas chambers. When Yeshayahu Leibowitz used the term ‘Judeo-Nazis,’ people asked him, ‘How can you say that? Are we about to build gas chambers?’ To that, he had two things to say. First, if the whole difference between us and the Nazis boils down to the fact that we’re not building gas chambers, we’re already in trouble. And second, maybe we won’t use gas chambers, but the mentality that exists today in Israel – and he said this 40 years ago – would allow it.

The outspoken style embraced by Cassif will not prevent me from voting again for the Joint List, just as it did not affect our friendly chats in the past. However, there is one thing I cannot dismiss as just another angry Facebook outburst: His flippant statement that genocide, or a creeping genocide, is taking place here, followed by a glib reversal of that statement, when he told Hecht: “You know what, leave out the genocide – call it ethnic cleansing.” If there is a genocide taking place – creeping or not – it’s not something you dismiss, not in an interview and not in private or public life. It’s not something you say is happening, and then, due to a change in your personal circumstances – being voted in as a political representative – you drop.

… The DNA of Jewish colonialism has not included genocide, but the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland and homes (I avoid the trendy term ethnic cleansing since it relies on the invader’s aggressive term – cleansing – which manipulates the positive connotations of this term). The forgotten Palestinian enclaves Israel has created on both sides of the Green Line (the 1967 border) are a compromise between the half-concealed yearning to empty the land of its Palestinian inhabitants and the recognition that this is impossible for geopolitical reasons.

It could be that Gantz made a mistake, so it’s important to remind him that we’re talking about running for the prime minister’s seat, and not a mass murder’s competition that lands one a place at The Hague.

… Many other regimes have carried out ethnic cleansing and even genocide, and the world remained silent, because those regimes did not boast about their actions. They killed huge numbers of people, but in their propaganda videos they would display happy children playing in pastoral settings. ISIS, on the other hand, chose to show off. That’s the only difference. And that’s how ISIS managed to unite the entire world against it.

This is another one of those cases where the word genocide isn’t mentioned in the original report, however the conditions described amount to genocide:

More than a quarter of illnesses in Gaza are caused by water pollution, a new study has said, noting that this is the main cause of mortality in the coastal enclave that has endured an Israeli siege since 2007.

The study, which the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a copy of, was carried out by RAND Corporation, an American NGO. It said that it reached these findings four years ago and that “since that time these numbers have continued to grow”.

Based on the report, Haaretz said that the collapse of water infrastructure has led to a sharp rise in germs and viruses such as rotavirus, cholera and salmonella.

The report said the situation is worsening due to repeated Israeli operations in Gaza which started in 2008.

… The study concluded that the current situation is that “Gaza is incapable of supplying enough water for its 2 million inhabitants”.

According to the concepts of Smotrich, Zohar and Shaked, a Jew from Brooklyn who has never set foot in this country is the legitimate owner of this land, while a Palestinian whose family has lived here for generations is a stranger, living here only by the grace of the Jews. “A Palestinian,” Zohar tells Hecht, “has no right to national self-determination since he doesn’t own the land in this country. Out of decency I want him here as a resident, since he was born here and lives here – I won’t tell him to leave. I’m sorry to say this but they have one major disadvantage – they weren’t born as Jews.”

From this one may assume that even if they all converted, grew side-curls and studied Torah, it would not help. This is the situation with regard to Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers and their children, who are Israeli for all intents and purposes. This is how it was with the Nazis. Later comes apartheid, which could apply under certain circumstances to Arabs who are citizens of Israel. Most Israelis don’t seem worried.

This planned deportation is the latest in a long line of historical injustices the Jewish state has perpetrated since 1948. It puts Israel in a place of dishonor alongside states whose history includes genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the deportation of refugees and asylum seekers. But unlike in the past, when mass expulsions took place in situations of war or violent conflicts – which obviously did not grant legitimacy to crimes against humanity – this time the circumstances are different. This time, it’s only the desire to keep the Jewish state forever pure.

“The long-standing dominant narrative about Palestinians is that we are an expendable people, one whose rights can be trampled with impunity, whose lives don’t matter, because we are lesser beasts on two legs, essentially prone to violence, motivated above all by hatred.

… What does he include under the term ‘humanity’?” the reporter persists. “The ability to see the other, his pain. It will be very difficult to restore the Gazans’ humanity, because they are occupied with their survival, they are concentrated on themselves. They don’t see the other. They themselves have lost control over their sense of feeling, their whole behavior has become a form of acting out.”

I do not want to minimise the severity of daily life in Gaza. I am someone who has insisted the siege be recognised as genocidal. Nevertheless, I am appalled at the callousness of the interviewer as she asks for an elaboration of how people in Gaza have lost their “internal morality,” their very “humanity”.

It’s hard to believe that an elected representative of a party in the governing coalition could raise the option of genocide if the Palestinians don’t accept the terms he’s willing to offer them: either emigration, or life under an apartheid regime based on principles of Jewish law, which would be even worse than the one that existed in South Africa. Smotrich, a deputy speaker of the Knesset, is the most senior government figure to date to say unabashedly that the option of genocide is on the table if the Palestinians don’t agree to our terms – and it’s clear they won’t agree.